March 19, 2012 - Comments Off on Mead and Mariners

Mead and Mariners

Avast pirates seem to be the hot new thing. Between last month's Wired and Megaupload woes, it's impossible to escape these swashbuckling bandits of seas both wet and digital. Probably every illustrator has drawn a sexy pirate and now I'm no exception. She turned out pretty good but could use some ratio refinements and such. For the time I'm happy with it. I had hired a Illustration Agency to help with some art work.

Figurehead

Of course it's not happenstance that Pirates, in their classic crusty form and otherwise, remain such a popular subject for creatives worldwide. Something about their almost noble quest for freedom and booty overshadows their darker aspects. I remember growing up scared stiff of pirates with tales of Black Beard and the like. However, three Johnny Depp movies later I'm not so fearful.

But pirates aren't only relegated to their 18th century ships. The ideas they represent: independence, camaraderie, freedom and exploration with  a dash of questionable morality have reached into nearly every genre imaginable from sci-fi (Firefly) to non-fiction (The Social Network). Yet despite the dark overtones, a key aspect of any pirate story is the child-like longing the induce. The artwork of Peter Ferguson exemplifies this story-book view of pirates, and many other classic themes, gorgeously. His crisp sepia-toned works are equal parts Rockwell and fantasy.

Sealegs

MudsharkFerguson's pieces have an unavoidable story-book feel but their complexity defies such a simplification. His composition's are extremely nuanced to the point that the small images available on his website cannot possibly do justice to the work. Furthermore his sense of texture, perspective and color is impeccable. While his commercial work all has a very similar feel to it, it's nice to see his magazine, personal and sketchbook work to get a better feel for his versatility. It's hard not to think of turn-of-the-century commercial illustrations when going through his portfolio.

One can hardly go anywhere on the web without running into pirates. That hacker-geek culture would take up the monicker seems inevitable. Yet for all their digital raiding, internet pirates lack any sense of design (see 4Chan, Reddit and Pirate Bay, Anonymous being an exception). However some in the internet community, like Bones of Themble, took the theme of pirates and did some beautiful things.

BonesThe beautiful artwork aside, this site is clear and wonderfully laid out. The animated HTML5 header is very well done as well. Moreover the site is marvelously responsive, going to a still one-column layout on resize. Bravo.

But let's not forget the pirate's Scandinavian counterpart: the Viking. In tribute, please enjoy the following music video/rock battle/robot fight. A classic but still amazing.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

Published by: benchirlin in The Sketching Mechanism

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